Tag: MacOS X

As I have a system running Mac OS X Tiger, I thought I’d give the NeXT icon set a try again, nearly all sites hosting the components required have now all shut down, thankfully for the Internet Archive copies were saved.
You can obtain a copy of ShapeShifter from here
I’d mirrored the eXec theme which is now unfetchable because it was available as a download from within ShapeShifter. Download, uncompress & rename eXec.guikit to eXec.guiKit before opening.
My NeXT icon set is available here
The original NeXT theme is available from here.
The NeXT icon set applied to Tiger

NeXT icon set & eXec theme

NeXT icon set & NeXT 2.0 theme

Everything seems ok on Mac OS X 10.4.11 apart from Safari which causes the original OS X skin to display on the menu bar when it’s the active application.

If you’re finding users are unable to dial-in via L2TP/IPsec VPN after upgrading Lion Server to 10.7.3 then check /var/log/ppp/vpnd.log
If you’re seeing DSAuth plugin: Failed to retrieve MPPE encryption keys from the password server: errno -14484, ctxt 4 logged on dial-in attempts then you’ll need to adjust your password policy.
There is an Apple support article HT4748 which covers how to make this change.
Thanks to the user bobgeo on the Apple discussion forums for the pointer.

nwdiag is a tool written in python for generating network diagrams from text files, rack diagrams can also be built using the bundled rackdiag utility.
nwdiag requires PIL built with freetype2 support, if this is missing you’ll receive the following error when you try to generate a diagram:ERROR: The _imagingft C module is not installed.

Following the instructions in the README file included with PIL, once the build process completes you’ll receive a summary:PIL 1.1.7 SETUP SUMMARY
--------------------------------------------------------------------
version 1.1.7
platform darwin 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Jul 31 2011, 19:30:53)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2335.15.00)]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--- TKINTER support available
*** JPEG support not available
--- ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support available
*** FREETYPE2 support not available
*** LITTLECMS support not available
--------------------------------------------------------------------

It appears that freetype2 support is not built by default & I wasn’t paying enough attention so I missed the notice following the summaryTo add a missing option, make sure you have the required
library, and set the corresponding ROOT variable in the
setup.py script..
After a brief search I came across this blog post which covered how to define the paths for the freetype library & header files.
Setting FREETYPE_ROOT in setup_site.py toFREETYPE_ROOT = "/usr/X11/lib", "/usr/X11/include"
solved the problem & the summary listed --- FREETYPE2 support available when I reran the build process.
After that everything worked fine, the following config generated the image at the bottom of the page:nwdiag {
inet [shape = cloud];
inet -- router;
router;
network office {
router;
"Mail server";
"Web server";
}
}

The project is still in its infancy and there are features missing for implementing common elements from a cisco discipline (like representing etherchannel) but it’s promising as you can put a simple diagram together very quickly.

To access a shared resource/location calendar on a iCal server from the Lightning extension for you’ll need the GUID for the calendar you wish to access, see my previous post on how to obtain it.

Once you’ve obtained the GUID, construct a url using the following convention (assuming you’re connecting to the server via SSL)https://yourserver.somewhere.local:8443/calendars/__uids__/your-shared-cal-guid/calendar/
Switch to Thunderbird, go to File > New > Calendar…
Select “On the Network” from the wizard & press continue
Select “CalDAV” as the format & for the location specify the URL you constructed using the convention above & press continue.
Once you’ve specify a name for the shared calendar & pressed continue you should have access to the shared calendar.

Then on the iPhone (assuming the device is unmanaged), create a new CalDAV calendar account & fill in the correct server, username & password field & hit next.
Assuming everything went ok, you should be back on the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” page, select the new calendar you just created & advanced settings.
Edit the “Account URL”, replacing the UID on the end of the url with the GUID of the shared calendar you noted down on the first step.
eg:https://username@yourserver.somewhere.local:8443/principals/__uids__/6x3331a8-as12-ea2x-4ou1-ndeb3ct4wa686

It seems that Mac OS Lion server (10.7.0) may have been released with a broken CUPS configuration. Visiting http://localhost:631/admin would generate an “Internal server error”, this seems to be addressed in newer builds (my Macbook Pro which was install from a 10.7.2 image does not exhibit the problem yet a customers server which came bundled with 10.7.0 (upgraded to 10.7.1 > 10.7.2) does).
To resolve the issue sudo cupsctl --debug-logging
Then switch off the debug logging with sudo cupsctl --no-debug-logging

I suspect the problem is due to a missing directory because comparing the default, previous & current revisions of the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf did not show anything that could cause problems.
I’d also go far as to say that you don’t need to turn on debug logging in-order to resolve this issue, it can be any of the options that can be set via cupsctl as it checks the configuration of the system, this is just a theory as I was unable to dig further because I was on a production system. Resetting the printing system did not solve the issue when attempted previously.

I made a few recordings on my iPhone using the Voice Memos app but out of the three recordings I was only able to transfer one of them successfully into iTunes.
The way it’s meant to work is, if you connect your iPhone to your machine & select Music > Sync Music & tick the Include voice memos then when you sync your phone, your recordings should show up in a playlist in iTunes named Voice Memos.
Assuming your files have been processed correctly that is!

What happens is when you record your voice memos, they are saved as quicktime .mov files, then the app converts these to .m4a files afterwards. If you’re unlucky & this conversion process is interrupted e.g in my case I made these recordings on a iPhone 3G which meant no multitasking, switching out to another app meant that I was left with an incomplete m4a file which would never play or get imported, at the time I assumed this was due to the fact that the recording was too long for the iPhone but now that I’ve upgraded to the iPhone 4 & still experiencing the same problem I decided to look further.
I downloaded a demo version of PhoneView which gives you access to the files stored on your phone & fired it up, selecting the Voice Memos folder I could see my recordings which I selected & hit the “Copy From iPhone” button.
The file which transfered succesfully into iTunes previously played without a hitch, but the other two still wouldn’t play though file(1) reported all three files as:ISO Media, MPEG v4 system, iTunes AAC-LC
Looking at the preferences for PhoneView I enabled “Advanced disk mode” to see if I could dig a little deeper

After enabling this & selecting the Disk folder on the top left hand side I was given access to the filesystem on the phone, selecting the Recordings folder I could see .mov files of the two recordings which I couldn’t get to play so I copied them out & gave them a try in quicktime, these turned out to be the intact recordings.

The stock BIND config on Mac OS X (both client & server versions) is set to listen on TCP port 54 for control commands via rndc(8), the rndc utility however doesn’t have a config file, so it defaults to using TCP port 953, this mean it has to be invoked with -p 54 to work properly, to rectify the issue create /etc/rndc.conf & add the following to itinclude "/etc/rndc.key";
options {
default-key "rndc-key";
default-server 127.0.0.1;
default-port 54;
};

These packages are broken, I will upload the metapackages which include the dependenices when the option works in macports (it’s not atm!!), I apologize for wasting anyones time with these!!

Now that GnuCash is included with with Darwin Ports AKA MacPorts
I’ve made a precompiled disk image to make the installation that little bit easier (the dependency list is quiet big & it takes a while to compile)
I’ve also tweaked the original GnuCash LauncherMichael Elliot made so it works with the version of GnuCash made with Darwin Ports / MacPorts (his version was for Fink & the drag & drop file feature didn’t work on tiger)
You can grab the moded launcher here

You’ll need to install the Apple X Server from your OS X Install disks if you want to use the Launcher.
To use GnuCash you’ll need a X Server installed, either the Apple version from your OS X Disks or XFree86 from Fink or Darwin Ports AKA MacPorts
You can grab a precompiled version of XFree86 4.5.0 from here

I was sent this sample config by a guy called Karl for inclusion with the FreeBSD port (still haven’t done it yet, sorry Karl!)
It should theoretically work with OS X aswell, now all that’s left is a config for PF & all should be well.

then you’re using GCC 4.0.1, use gcc_select to switch to GCC 3.3 by running gcc_select 3.3 then rerunning make. When you’re done you can switch back to GCC 4 by running gcc_select 4.0 surprise surprise!!! 🙂

The guide on O’reilly Network covering howto bypass the OS X GUI doesn’t seem to work on 10.4.x (I haven’t verified it on previous versions yet), as the guide mentions you need to uncomment the first console entry & comment out the second entry in /etc/ttys

You then need to goto /etc/mach_init.d/ & remove WindowsServer.plist
I highly recommend that you move the file into somewhere else instead (I moved mine into /etc as it’s alot easier to roll back).

Once you’ve rebooted & logged in you should find that the system stays at the shell instead of jumping to a blank blue screen with a cursor.

You’ll receive this error if you have partitioned your disk using the 10.4.4 Disk Utility, using a Windows 98 Bootdisk run fdisk /mbr
then run fdisk & make the partition you installed OS X on active & reboot, OS X should boot now without any probs 🙂

Due to a lack of disk space I decided to zap my /System & /Library folders while my PowerBook was in Target Disk mode & connected to my G4 PowerMac, only to find out that I couldnt install Tiger when I got the PowerBook home 🙁
Running Disk Utility & trying to repair the disk brought up several Overlapped Extent Allocation Errors (File 123465x)

After laying a few bricks here & there as I hadn’t backed up (surprise! surprise!!!) I googled around & came up with this

As Keoneo mentions in the 3rd tip, if you make a note of the file numbers DiskUtility complains about, fire up terminal.app & run find / -inum 123456 (dont worry about any of the letters at the end of the file number)
You’ll be given the file name of the offending file number, unfortunately you cant actually delete the individual file, you have the delete the folder which the file is in by typing the following command in terminal.app rm -rf /path/to/offending/file/
If you are doing all this from the OS X install Disk or if you have connected the broken disk/System to a healthy Mac add /Volumes/*disk_label*/ to the beginning of the path e.g if your broken disk is called "Macintosh HD" you would issue the follwing commandrm -rf /Volumes/Machintosh\ HD/path/to/offending/file/
note the backslash between the word Macintosh & HD, you need to have that in so the shell understands that whatever you are referring to has a space in otherwise it treats the text either side of the space as two seperate things which wont work!!
Once you have removed the offending files, run repair disk in Disk Utility again & all should be well again!! 😀
Verify and Repair disk "Macintosh HD"
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect number of thread records
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume file count
(It should be 29573 instead of 466435)
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 5662 instead of 80007)
Invalid volume free block count
(It should be 5920335 instead of 1269081)
Volume Header needs minor repair
Repairing volume.
Rechecking volume.
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD was repaired successfully.
Mounting Disk

From the Application Preferences in Virtual PC install the script menu. Then pick the VM from the Virtual PC list you’d like to speed up, goto the Virtual PC Scripts section in the script menu & choose Toggle System Disc Cache.

Solaris 9 normally wont allow you to install onto a virtual machine on Virtual PC, it bombs out with the error 486 Processor Detected This Processor is not supported by this release of Solaris
Thanx to this simple hack found on Kernel Thread its possible to install Solaris 9 without a hitch on VPC